GLENMONT – After a long road to its purchase by the Town of Bethlehem last year, the Highway Department began cleaning up and stabilizing the Heath Dairy barn on Wemple Road so the town can decide what to do with the structure.
The structure was a retail store and working dairy operation that closed in the mid 1980s and sat vacant until the Town of Bethlehem purchased the 153-acre farm in January.
According to Bethlehem Highway Superintendent Marc Dorsey, crews began sitework last week which included removing overgrown trees and vines and cleaning out the contents of the barn portion of the structure.
“For insurance purposes, we have to stabilize and secure the site,” Dorsey said. “It was full of really dry hay and debris. You could barely see the side of it with all the vines on it. We cleared them off.”
The crews, however, refrained from working on the former retail sales area due to the potential presence of asbestos. The highway crew on the site did receive a visit from an inspector from the State Department of Labor’s Asbestos Control Bureau on Tuesday, March 21 after the agency opened an investigation.
The DOL press office confirmed Thursday that they have an open inspection at the site, but they did not issue a stop work order. The department would not comment further on any open investigation.
“We found some white dust, floor tiles and pipe insulation in that area that could be asbestos,” Dorsey said. “We kept our guys out of there until it could be tested. The dust could be from sheetrock or something else, but we just don’t know.”
According to Dorsey, the ACB inspector tested some areas, but advised the town to do more comprehensive testing of the retail area, which he said is in the works.
The retail area contains square tiles on the floors and pipe insulation that, simply because of their age and style, are suspected of containing asbestos. He said that his crews stayed away from that area from the start of the cleanout for that reason, not because of the DOL inspection.
The testing will take place around the retail areas and inside three Dumpsters of materials that contain debris from a partially collapsed portion of the structure. That debris was removed with machines from the outside of the structure. The floors of that area did not not have tile or suspect insulation, Dorsey said.
The dairy barn portion of the structure, which is connected to the retail area, was cleaned out since it was mainly uninsulated and had no signs of contamination.
According to Bethlehem Town Supervisor David VanLuven, before the town closed on the property last month, a phase-one environmental assessment was done on the property, and he said he did not know if the report included assessing the buildings for asbestos.
According to the EPA, the actual sampling of soil, air, groundwater and/or building materials is typically not conducted during a phase-one ESA. It is an investigative process to see if there are areas that could be contaminated. If suspect areas are found, it would trigger a phase two assessment, where the areas would be tested.
On Thursday, Spotlight News requested the ESA through the freedom of information law, and the Town has 20 days to respond to the request. We will update this story when we receive it.
Stabilizing the property
The Heath Dairy operated for many years as a retail and farming operation on the site. It was closed in 1985. The property has been a farm for over 250 years, but the barn has become a safety hazard and was not secure.
Until the town decides what to do with the structure, it had to be stabilized, cleaned of debris and secured.
“We took 65 round bales of hay out of the barn,” Dorsey said. “It was bone dry. To say it was a fire hazard was an understatement.”
Once it is cleaned out, evaluated for structural deficiencies and roof patched, the barn will be boarded up to keep people out.
According to Dorsey and VanLuven, the approximately 7,350 cubic feet of hay was moved from the site to the compost facility where it will be stored until it is determined where and how it would be best composted.
Dorsey said that only the hay bales were fit to compost because of other trash and wood mixed in with what was left. That material will head to a landfill because the wood may have lead paint. According to the CDC, the likelihood of contamination by lead paint in structures built before 1978, when it was banned, is very high.
The future of the barn
“It is such a unique and historic structure,” VanLuven said. “Now we will go through a public process to see what can be done with it.”
He said this will be a three-step process.
The first step was to protect the property from development so it could remain farmland and be rented to farmers until the process is complete.
The second step is to clean up and stabilize the barn. By completing this step, it will give the town the time to complete the last step.
“Step three, which is working with the community over the next year to envision what we want to see happen on the properties, with the fundamental premise that they remain as farmland and not converted into subdivisions,” VanLuven said.
He said the process will take about a year.
“We are able to talk about the possibility of keeping the barn as part of our community because we invested in protecting the property,” VanLuven said. “And our community voted by an overwhelming margin to do this.”
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